[jmontgomery2]

When designing a network it is important to follow a logical network design plan and cross reference it with the physical network design plan in order to streamline the setup. There is nothing worse when designing a network than cable management being an after thought as this makes maintenance harder than it should be.
A second important design aspect is defense in depth. Redundant firewalls, password changes, and separation of duties can prevent sensitive data from falling into the wrong hands.
Lastly, when designing a network, understanding the scope of your network and its scalability will save many headaches in the future. It is important to know what kind of network it will be, the bandwidth needed and if you will use virtualization, traditional networking, or pay for a cloud service for your network. These are all important decisions to make when designing a network.